The Telenor follows on from similar announcements from Vodafone, Telefonica, TIM, Orange and T-Mobile. It is interesting to see that 10 months on from the birth of Ovi that initial operator resistance to Ovi has largely crumbled away, much as we expected. Nokia is placing itself in a very strong position to deliver its Ovi service platform to a larger number of users. Its agreement with operators should give it a significant strategic advantage over it rivals.
Here's an extract from the press release:
"Our ambition is to be a leading operator providing new and user-friendly services accessible on mobile devices. The agreement with Nokia is the beginning of an exciting collaboration where we will extensively deploy the capabilities of our high-speed third generation mobile network," said Morten Karlsen Soerby, Executive Vice President and Head of Telenor Nordic.
"We are pleased to announce this cooperation with Telenor and strongly believe that it will lead the way in the Scandinavian market in integrating devices and services together. Openness is at the core of the Ovi environment and we are constantly looking for new ways to offer consumers a great variety of experiences that they can choose from according to their own preferences," said Timo Ihamuotila, Executive Vice President of Sales, Nokia.